Half-time tactical changes turn tie around and see club reach FA Cup final for
the first time in their history

It had taken them 84 years to reach their second FA Cup semi-final, but yesterday Hull City made it a stage further: the club are in the final for the first time in their history. Up in the stands, as their team scrambled victory over a magnificent Sheffield United, the Humberside fans bellowed out their acknowledgment of the man who had made it all possible. “Broooce,” they yelled.

As the extended “ooo”echoed round the stadium, it was like watching Bruce Springsteen here last summer. But Steve Bruce deserved the acclaim: it was his management that delivered the opportunity to take on Arsenal in four weeks and which turned this tie around.

Many of the Hull fans had turned up wearing Bruce masks in acknowledgement of the manager. By half-time, they must have been wondering why they had bothered. Sheffield United, brilliantly co-ordinated by Nigel Clough, made a mockery of the huge gap in status between the two clubs. Quicker, sharper, more aggressive on the ball, they made Hull look pedestrian, complacent, one-paced.

John Brayford was running the left hand side of Bruce’s defence ragged. Goals from Jose Baxter and Stefan Scougall, book-ending one from Hull’s Yannick Sagbo, had the normally reserved, undemonstrative Clough punching the air like an over-excited nine year old.

“At half-time I thought we were well worthy of the lead,” Clough said. “We’re left with that tinge, that feeling we could have done it today.”

In the Sheffield end they certainly believed it was possible. As the League One side took a 2-1 lead, the red-and-white-striped hordes produced a sustained noise louder than Wembley can have heard since it was renovated.

But then Bruce went to work at the interval. Physically he may look like a senior executive who has been told by the company doctor he needs to get some exercise and has taken the first step to a new regime by getting his old tracksuit out of the cupboard, now three sizes too small. But his brain is evidently in full working order.

“I have to take responsibility for that first half,” he said. “We had to change. We were awful. We made more mistakes in the first half-hour than I remember in the entire season.”

Clough had allowed the television cameras into the Sheffield dressing room at half-time. Bruce was less welcoming, which at least saved the broadcaster from a torrent of complaints about bad language. It must have been a feisty exchange in Hull’s inner sanctum. “I didn’t say much, the captain did it all,” Bruce revealed. “We made a couple of tactical changes, but the b------ings were down to the captain.”

The victory, though, was more to do with Bruce’s tactical changes than Curtis Davies’s oratory. Bruce addressed his side’s lack of pace by bringing on Matt Fryatt and Sone Aluko. Their speed immediately gave the Sheffield United midfield alarm; Fryatt justified his manager’s decision by equalising within two minutes of the restart.

And it was into the spaces that injection of pace opened up that Tom Huddlestone began to do his work. A player built to stroll, Huddlestone at last started to look what he is: a class above anything Sheffield United could offer. He scored a lovely goal, dancing through the defence in a manner reminiscent of his fellow Spur Ricky Villa, to put his side into the lead. It was a goal which had Bruce leaping with an excitement that might not be wise for a man of his growing scale.

From there, Hull eased away. Bruce’s third substitute, Stephen Quinn, scored against his former club, before David Meyler killed off Sheffield’s last-minute revival with a fifth in the final seconds.

“Not often you get eight goals in an FA Cup semi,” said Clough. “Just wish we’d got four of them.”

So it is that Hull’s saviour will now be getting measured up for his Cup final suit (and how the tailor will be looking forward to shifting a shedload of cloth).

“All the pressure will be on Arsenal,” Bruce said of the final. “They’ve not won anything in nine years. I’m starting the bull---- already. How sad is that?”